burning, burning, ashes
by SwiftyTheWriter
Summary: "All this, it taught me something, though. That, while out of all tragedy and horrors, beauty can appear, the opposite is is equally true. Out of beauty can come ruin and death."


Grief is a terrible thing.

* * *

Rose Tyler groaned at the folder in her hands. Pete sat behind his desk and looked both amused and unimpressed.

"Arizona," Rose said, a bit of a whine in her voice, "Really?"

"Yes, 'Really'," Pete imitated her in a truly professional manner. He drops the humor from his expression, "This is serious, Rose. You know this."

She did. Black market dealings of alien tech at a transnational scale was everyone's problem. Lumic made sure of that. The organization, Prometheus was something no one could ignore.

"But, Arizona in June," Rose protested for the sake of it.

Pete looked unimpressed. "You'll survive. Pack light."

This was the last time Rose saw her adopted father alive.

* * *

"So, you're going on another one of those mad trips again." Jackie Tyler said with an air of disapproval.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Mission, Mum. You should talk to Pete, as he's the one that gave me it."

"Mad, the both of you." An explosion sounded followed by some colorful swearing in multiple alien languages. Neither women flinched.

"Make that the three of you. God, if Tony turns out normal,"

Rose snorted, "Right. Mum he's seven and he's on and rapidly going through secondary level math. He's even started asking me questions about my physics thesis and that's not even going into what him and Doc-John talk about. There isn't a normal bone in his body."

Jackie looked like she was ready to argue some more but the oven timer went off and she went to get the food out. Rose grimaced. Six years of practice hadn't improved her mum's cooking by as much.

"Are you sure you can't stay for dinner," Jackie asked her. "I'm sure Tony would love to say goodbye."

Rose shook her head. "I have to be on a plane in about," she glanced down at her watch, "fifty four minutes. I'll eat on the plane."

Jackie made a scoffing the sound and muttered something about "airplane food". She sighed and held out her arms, steaming monstrosity behind her. "Well, come on, " She said. "Give your mother a kiss."

Rose wrapped her arms around her and pecked her Mum on the cheek. "Love you," she said.

"Yeah, yeah," Jackie faux grumbled. "Love you too, sweetheart."

Another sound like an explosion cracked throughout the air followed by more intensive swearing that made Rose almost wish she didn't understand what the languages meant. The mother and daughter broke apart with two equally exasperated sighs.

Jackie nudged her away, "You best go check on himself. He's awfully fragile now that he can't do the face thing."

Rose snorted at that but nodded anyway, "Say bye to Tony for me."

"Of course," Jackie sniffed and Rose strolled out of the kitchen to find her singed fiance without a backward glance.

* * *

"I'll miss you," Rose said quietly to her fiance. Her arms were around his neck while his were around her waist.

"I'll miss you too," The Doctor-sorry, wait John Smith told her. "I mean, I'll get so much work done without-"

Rose hit him behind the head and he winced.

"Ruining the moment?" He asked in a sheepish tone.

"Oh, yes." Rose told him.

"This make it better?" He pressed a square of leather in her hand.

She looked down. His hand was wrapped around her's and in it, "Your psychic paper?"

"Haven't you heard? What's mine is yours."

"That's not for another three months."

"I was never good at the waiting."

"So there one thing-" The Doctor cut Rose off with a kiss and for a moment everything was perfect.

Rose then picks up her suitcase and walks out the door.

* * *

Her main suspect got into a car accident three weeks after she arrived. Disappointed at the waste of her time, she forgot to file her report to the local office in her haste to get on the first plane to London and only remembered when she was in air.

Rose flopped her head onto the back of her airplane seat and groaned and winced as that movement pulled at her sunburn. Pete was going to kill her. And worse, this meant triple the paperwork when she got home.

She really, really hated assignments in America.

* * *

Rose Tyler opened the door to the manor and nothing was wrong. She was jet-lagged and sunburned and glad to be home. She dropped her suitcase in the foyer to get later and was already imagining the long bubble bath that awaited her.

"Mum," Rose called out as she strolled through the hallway. "You there?"

She didn't get a reply, which was a bit odd as it was seven on a Wednesday night and her Mum liked to make dinner on Mondays and Wednesdays.

"Mum, Pete, Tony? Anyone around?" Rose called out. No answer. She sighed and wished her Mum had picked a smaller place to live. No matter, the kitchen had an intercom.

Rose lengthened her stride and turned the corner in the hallway to where the kitchen was. She stopped at the door and sighed. The blender was on.

Rose pushed open the door, "You know, Mum, we got to work out a better system for-"

Her keys fell from her hand. They landed on something wet.

The first thing she registers is the color red. Then the smell. The her mind unfreezes but all she can think is "ohnopleasenodon'tletitbenonononononononono-".

Her Mum is slumped against the counter, eyes glassy and skin like wax. Her abdomen, like the floor, and the cabinets, and the ceiling, and, and, and, ("nonoplease") is painted in red and the room smells like death.

Her mum looked terrified.

Shaking and sobbing, her Torchwood training kicks in and she takes her gun out of it's holster and sweeps the room.

She nearly breaks again. Her little brother is slumped against the kitchen table, half his skull missing and blood staining the wood.

She bit her lip so hard the skin broke and she could taste copper and feel heat drip down her chin.

"Think," Rose ordered herself. "Think."

The door leading to the patio was open and was the probable point of entry. Judging by the footprints, there were two aggressors. Likely humanoid, considering the size and tread of the shoes they were wearing. Lack of shell casings and entry wounds suggest some sort of blaster. Not current earth tech.

Not current earth tech.

A sick feeling grew in Rose's gut. She had a feeling she knew what that meant.

She left the kitchen for the patio. Pete is face down on the pavement, drenched in congealed blood. She is horribly unsurprised.

Doctor.

She ran back for the house, following the tracks that lead through and past the kitchen. She ran throughout hallways, twisting and making turns only to trip and sprawl on her face. The gun went flying from her grip and tore the skin on her hand. She recovered quickly and grabbed it again, then got to her feet whilst cursing herself. It takes a moment for her to register what she's seeing.

More blood and red, soaked fur.

Rose, the dog.

They killed the fucking dog.

Her jeans are soaked in Rosie's fur (it never did come to any name but her own) and she's shaking but she continues to walk and then run because…

If there was anywhere he'd be. Anywhere he'd go. It was was the Garage. The Garage wasn't a garage anymore, as he had refurbished it into a personal lab. It was filled with all his projects. He practically lived there. It was simultaneously the safest and most dangerous part of the house.

Rose slowed to a halt. Her heart thudded in her chest like a war drum. Tears obscured her vision. She couldn't feel anything.

He wasn't moving. He laid in the hallway floor in front of his Garage and his arm was outstretched, holding his sonic screwdriver. He wasn't moving.

He wasn't moving.

He wasn't moving.

He wasn't moving.

He wasn't moving.

He wasn't moving.

He wasn't moving.

Rose fell to her knees. She numbly reached forward for his sonic and shuddered when she touched the blood that slicked it. She flipped on "setting 23-2" and listened to the faint whirl. She tried not to reach at what it confirmed.

He was dead.

They all were dead.

She pulled out her phone and tucked the screwdriver gently in her jeans pocket ("It's bigger on the inside."). She dialed.

"Torchwood command? This is Agent Rose Tyler, ID Designation: 66127VCBW. We have a Priority Red, Situation Eagle." Her voice broke. "F-four confirmed deceased. Emergency command protocols in place." She listened to the replies then hung up.

Rose stared ahead for a moment, then she screamed.

She screamed.

She screamed.

She screamed.

She burned.

* * *

"Once," She tells the Doctor, because now is a time for sharing and talking about what happened when they were apart. "I used the canon and I landed on this planet. I don't know what it was called and I couldn't understand the dialect yet-that came later-but I swear it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen."

"The sky was always in the middle of a sunset similar to Earth's, but richer. Every color you could imagine filled the sky. Great oranges, gold, pinks and reds. Near the sun, if you squinted, you could see a pale blue so much like Earth's sky but off, somehow, and near the edges, where color disappeared was the deepest purple you have ever seen."

"And underneath all this, with the crystalline plant life that made looking at the ground like gazing at a thousand, thousand stars, was the people."

"You could clearly tell that there was two separate sentient species. One of the species looked humanoid, though they were tall, long limbed with opaque skin and a green glow to them like the foliage. The other's had horns like rams, four arms and legs of equal length and a similar bearing. There were animals amidst them that carried the use of a horse, though they looked more like rhinos and could fly. And everyone was fighting."

"The rams, which I later learned were called the "Raul" and the opaque beings the "Staul", they'd fall to the ground and gore their opponents. The Staul were far stronger than they looked, they could rip the horns off with their bare hands and didn't stop there. People were dying, screaming."

"When they bled, the blood was the color of the crystalline plants. It was absorbed instantly, either by their opponent, through their skin, or the ground."

"The fought, and they fought for what seemed like hours. Until, suddenly, they stopped. They said nothing. They left the dying and took the walking wounded away. More than half of both sides were dead."

Rose looked up and nodded at The Doctor's disgusted face.

"I had landed on that planet from a dearth of options. The calculations were off back at base and they sent me to a place with an unsurvivable atmosphere. The canon took thirty minutes to charge and I wouldn't last ten. The canon's design, however, was based on the vortex manipulator. As in, we revamped one for our own uses. It had a few extra minutes of oxygen from a mask I kept on me and I hurriedly altered the machine with my set of field repair tools."

Rose gave The Doctor a tongue touched grin, "Guess that fancy engineering degree came in handy after all."

"I did an emergency jump to the nearest inhabited planet on the gamble that it would be something I could survive. Lucky for me, it was. Less lucky, the repairs to make the dimension cannon a, ya know, dimension cannon again would take atleast a week. I was stuck."

"The Staul came across me first, fresh off the battlefield. I didn't try to run. They had long ranged weapons and I had seen how fast they moved. I had a hand on my gun put I wasn't hopeful. But, to my surprise, the did not attack."

"Instead they took me back to their settlement, a series of, well, caves is the only word for it. It's not something that translates well. It looked the size of a city of diamond clefts and outcroppings, some hollow some not. It wasn't diamond, not really. It was the same crystalline like plant life that was present everywhere else, though massive. It was smooth and soft and warm to the touch. Unlike the rest of the plant life, this was white and gleaming. It took no shade other than it's own."

"The translator I carried with me was mostly fried. I only got every other word, but it was enough to realize that the Staul were hosts and not captors. I got the gist that I was not the first off world person to come there and things must have been cordial enough because my presence was not challenged. I was given a room in what looked like it could be a palace anywhere else, but it was par of course there, and was informed I had to pitch in with chores if I wanted to stay."

"I ended up staying for a little over two weeks. Every third day, or what counted as one there, as there was no solar cycle to base it off of, all the soldiers went down to fight while the caretakers, elderly and children stayed behind. Some came in from presumably other settlements, others were just the reserves. Every three days they'd go down to fight and a fraction of them would return when the day ended."

"I asked my hosts why, near the end of my stay. There didn't seem to be a problem of resources or even some intense rivalry or hatred for the Raul. They even had courteous trade relations with them. I had helped set up the wares a few times. Around the end, I was getting a better grasp of their language, so I asked why. Why fight?"

"I was looked at with confusion with most until I asked an elder. They smiled at me, at it was a kind smile of one who knew no maliciousness. They said, "Troukain Ras.""

"They could see I still didn't understand, so that night after the battle they took me down to the battlefield by hand. The two species decompose almost instantly compared to most I've come across, a matter of minutes rather than months. I looked out onto the battlefield that was almost deficit of corpses and I saw."

"You see, in the language of the Staul, "beauty" and "life" mean the same thing. When the Elder told me "Troukain Ras." I translated it as "For life."

"I looked at the most beautiful place I had ever seen and I realized I was as wrong as I was right. I watched as bodies, Staul, Raul, their horses they named as Shens, it didn't matter, when their bodies decomposed in their place were new crystal lifeforms. The pre existing ones had grown taller or looked healthier. Everything surrounding me shone with life."

"The Elder did not say anything, she did not have to."

Rose let out a harsh sounding laugh, "Troukain Ras. For Life."

"I stayed there, that night. I didn't sleep. I just sat there and thought. I think it was the first time I knew something so beautiful could be so terrible. The first time I wanted to acknowledge it. In the morning I left for home."

"I never did learn the reasons behind why they did what they did. Why they fought, I mean. I sometimes wondered if it was religious. Or, maybe if they had started something a long time ago they just couldn't remember to stop. Sometimes, when things got rough, I thought back to that beautiful and terrible place and wondered why no one had ever looked afraid or sad or even concerned at the carnage."

"All this, it taught me something, though. That, while out of all tragedy and horrors, beauty can appear, the opposite is is equally true. Out of beauty can come ruin and death."

* * *

A humming sound broke Rose out of her pained reverie. Torchwood would be there any second to investigate, to clean up. The humming grew louder and louder until it was almost overwhelming.

Her head felt hot.

The humming condensed into singing and it was… familiar. Suddenly, it quieted. Rose knew what it was. The young T.A.R.D.I.S.

From raising it with the Doctor, she had a rudimentary connection to it while he was the main pilot and telepathic bonder. He was physically better equipped for it. With him… It must have latched on her to survive, strengthening their bond. She could feel it, her in a shad had never before.

The T.A.R.D.I.S hummed and sung a song in her head that brought up familiarity from the depths of her memories. It was a song of grief and comfort and a loss so profound few could comprehend.

It made her realize she was not alone in the world. Not completely.

She had her T.A.R.D.I.S and every star in the sky just waiting for her.

But, first, she had an titan to ruin.

* * *

Rose sat in Pete's-her office and starred. She had been groomed to take his position for years, now. She would have when he retired. This wasn't what any of them had planned on.

Rose sat and she thought. The conclusions she was coming to were not kind ones, they were not good ones, but they were accurate.

Manor or not, the Tyler property was one of the best protected and well kept secrets in this day and age. Pete had seen to that. No one outside of the most trusted Torchwood personnel even had an inkling where they lived. No one who they didn't personally vet and trust knew where the manor was. It was a disturbing thought.

"Betrayal never comes from your enemies." Rose thinks bitterly.

Her assignment in Arizona dies and she doesn't check in like she should have. No, she hops on the first plane out of there. She survives whatever attempt was waiting for her.

The Doctor had run for the Garage with the screwdriver in his hand. He wasn't looking to fight or hole up as she assumed, he commenced the deadlock feature with whatever time he had left. He died, his murderers didn't get his work.

They killed her entire family, including her mother and brother. Why? A warning? No witnesses? No incentive to keep them alive? They had to know Torchwood would get up in arms about this. They had to know they would go after them hard.

Unless…

That was the point.

Rose clenched her fists and rung her buzzer. Her door opened and Tom-her secretary looks in. He's a young twenty something that looks nervous to look her in the face.

"Get me the Successor files and those of everyone involved with the Prometheus project," She orders.

"Y-yes ma'am." The boy says and scurries out.

She goes back though the files of all agents with clearance enough to knew where she lives. She hasn't slept in thirty six hours. She doesn't feel a thing.

What she doesn't know is that it isn't completely her mood that is scaring her secretary, though that is a part of it.

The main reason is the burning gold color of her eyes.

* * *

Three names. All higher level agents. Two are her friends.

She gets her proof. With help from her subordinates or without it.

She puts a kill order on them and doesn't feel a thing.

They are insignificant, after all.

* * *

A noise like grinding gears filled the air and a red phone booth appears from where there was nothing. The booth halts and the door opened.

A woman stepped out. She wears a blue leather jacket, a simple dress shirt and pair of jeans that look like they had been hacked off at the shins. Her hair is gold and gleaming and her eyes glow like the sun when the light hits them. If an outsider had looked at her they would have thought she was beautiful.

She turned to look at the building that called itself Brightfire Corp. and smiled with teeth.

She walked to the building unarmed with the only back up being the phone booth outside and the young song in her head.

It's been two weeks. The woman hasn't slept once.

She's aware that there's something different about her now. It's hard not to, what with the physical changes and all. But what really cinched it was when one of her lower level agents tried to kill her and all that happened was the bullet going through their own skull. She didn't blink.

Something in her woke up that should have never been awakened. From the stress she was under while bonding to The Tardis, no doubt. Now it's awake and free and it's like she has opened her eyes for the first time.

Before, when she was...this for the first time, she had an anchor. Her love for the Doctor, for Jack. No one is so lucky now. Now, all she has is her T.A.R.D.I.S and time. She knows exactly how much havoc she can cause, where she has to toe the line, and when she has to end it.

When a human is given the power of a god how can you expect them to become anything but a monster?

In the two weeks she has spent dismantling this "Prometheus", this one building was all that was left of the once mighty organization. The rest have been shot, burnt and salted. She had saved this one for last.

It was the one that gave to orders to kill her entire world.

She pauses for a second at the door frame. There's no going back after this. No returning to her old, human life. Her agents fear her, now, she knows. Everyone does. It won't be long till they turn against her.

After this, though, she'll have no reason left to stay.

It should hurt more than it does, she thinks.

She strolls in using the sonic to bypass the security. Oh, they have a Chilleen door lock. Cute.

"Hello," She called cheekily as she strolled through the doors. The receptionist stumbled back from her desk.

"You!" The woman exclaimed.

"Me," She replied back with a manic cheer.

The woman slipped a hand under her desk, probably hitting a silent alarm. Odds were that this place would be swarmed with men with big, shiny weapons in seconds.

All the more challenge.

"W-why, why are you here?" The reception asked and she dined to focus on her.

"Didn't you hear?" She pouted. "I thought you would hear," she said in a bit of a whine. "I mean I came all this way-to America no less. Have I mentioned I hate trips to America? Their almost worse than France and lemme tell you I hate-"

"But why," The receptionist cried. It said "Kelly" on her name tag.

Her eyes glittered at being interrupted. "Isn't it obvious, Kelly? Oh, how rude of me. Let me introduce myself. I am the Bad Wolf and I am here to give a response to the gift I was given."

"A-a gift."

"A gift, you see Prometheus," The receptionist pales even more, "created humanity and gifted them with fire. Brightfire, I see the comparison. In turn Zeus chained him to a rock and ordered him to be tortured daily only to heal at night, but he could not kill him." Bad Wolf paused for a second. "I am not Zeus."

"Maybe should thank you. The gift I have received will mean means the universe will last a lot longer than it was slated to," Bad Wolf paused, again, and when she spoke her voice was softer.

"I wonder if I knew this would happen. I am new, still. I don't see everything. Not yet."

The men rushed in and guns were firing. The being/woman/girl who called herself Bad Wolf didn't react.

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." For all the noise, Kelly could hear her perfectly. "But," Bad Wolf smiled wryly, "I was never quite good at acting appropriately."

The last thing they saw was gold.

* * *

 **AN: So, hope you all enjoyed this! I am way too rusty when it comes to uploading things on this site. I think I fished out all the typos by now, though. Do tell if you have any questions, I love to watch myself type! Have an awesome day! :)**


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